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Thursday, March 31, 2016

The university in Sfax, Tunisia. I can't imagine living with that sky every day.

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“Please be careful.” A friend’s Facebook message popped up
on my computer as I sat in my Dijon apartment eating lunch and reading about
the terrorist attack that had just happened in Brussels. I remember last November
when I was the one doing the checking with friends scattered throughout Paris
while I sat safe at home in St. Louis, having left an extended stay in France
only a week before the tragedy.

Now it’s just a few days before I leave Europe again and
head home. It’s not fear over terrorism that occupies my mind. Not in week when
the street markets are bursting with spring bouquets for sale. For this
traveler, it comes down to the most pedestrian things like “Will a terrorist
threat shut down public transport in Paris?” or “How will this affect my
flight?” or “Will it rain the whole time I’m in Paris. After all – April?”

As I watched the news reports on France24, an urge welled up
to call my husband on Skype and talk to him about mundane household affairs. I
can’t say it was fear. My apartment was safe and warm. There was soup de
courgette cooking on the stove. The sun had been out all week. These were not
signs of imminent danger. Yet my sense of security wavered by a small
increment.

When the terrorist attacks
happened in Paris last fall, many people in the U.S. cancelled their overseas
travel plans. I was thinking ahead to my next trip. After the tragedy of 9/11
in New York made many want to stay close to home, I bought plane tickets to
take my children to London. For a week we explored a country that had survived
Roman invasions and German bombardments. We experienced the world. I fed their
love of travel.

My daughter crosses oceans frequently for work at a time
when a plane seems to fall out of the sky at least every month. But she’s young
and adventurous and sees amazing opportunities to shape her life. And as her
mother I worry. Because that’s what mothers do. But I also worry about my son
whose job requires a long commute in highway traffic right in our own hometown.
Isn’t he playing the odds – the more miles traveled the more likely to be in a
crash? It’s a mother’s job to worry. Yes, I admit it. Sometimes I make up
reasons to text him to make sure he’s alive since he’s busy with two jobs and
friends and doesn’t call enough.

On
Good Friday evening as I arrived at l’Eglise Notre-Dame de Dijon, two armed
soldiers were standing on the steps outside. The battle between love/hope and
power/hate rages on. But in the dim light of the sanctuary the music of
Gregorian chants rose a couple of hundred feet into the vaulted arches and
floated over the crowd as the congregation followed the choir past the
multitude of stone columns, stopping at different stations in the church to
listen to the songs of love and sacrifice that had been heard there for 800
years. By the time the service was over, it was fairly easy to believe
"Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est" -- Where charity and love is,
there also is God.

The
world can be a dangerous place whether I stay where I was born or strike out on
unfamiliar roads. I’ve met more wonderful people and had more enriching
experiences on my trips than I’ve encountered bad ones. As I get older I feel a
sense of urgency to see more of the world before I can’t any more. Travel
reminds me that I’m not always in charge. And I’m ok with that. It reminds me
that my way of doing things is not the only or best way. It forces me outside
of my comfort zone, which is scary and good (can anyone say “Atlanta highways”?).
It makes me feel at home in the world, not just my own neighborhood.

All of this is to say that I will keep on traveling. There
is more beauty and joy out there than danger. I hope you feel the same.

I'm always wondering what's behind a closed door . . .

. . . Or around the next bend

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Since I’ve been out of
touch for longer than I had intended, let’s reconnect by you telling me the
most interesting or life-affecting place you have been, whether close to home
or at the ends of the earth. Click here to comment.

Who I am right now

I’m a Midwesterner who’s developed a desire for change as a woman reaching her midlife point. I still suck at French, but I’m working on it. I take thousands of photos (hooray, digital cameras!) but don’t always know what I’m doing. And I’m starting to write again. My goal is to keep moving in as many ways as I can until my time is up. Why don’t you join me?